The Birth House

For months I have looked forward to reading The Birth House by Ami McKay. The blurbs on the dust jacket made the story sound so delightful and warm. I was looking for a book that celebrated love, marriage, family, and childbirth, friendships among women, and enjoyment of domestic life and the role of wife and mother. Instead I read a tale that wallowed in the nasty side of life - most of the male characters were cruel, selfish, and violent. The women were conniving, miserable, and angry. The children were beaten and abused. The "birth house" of the title and the midwives did deliver a few babies, but more often they helped the wives of the area abort their babies.

The main theme of this book is that women, down-trodden and ill-used for centuries, finally turned their destinies around and fought the established order in the early part of the twentieth century, thus securing better lives for all women. (But those "better lives" look pretty tawdry and thin.)

Lovely book cover - sordid content. I do not recommend it and am sorry I put it on my reading list for this year.